Posts by Neil Petersen
Practicing Music Is Associated With a Sharper Brain Later in Life
If you want your brain to stay in good form as the years add up, be sure to keep a healthy diet, exercise frequently, and … play a musical instrument? A new meta-analysis of studies on the link between music and cognitive health has concluded that regularly practicing a musical instrument correlates with enhanced cognitive…
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Adverse Childhood Experiences Influence Life Satisfaction in Adulthood
We know that childhood experiences lay the foundation for mental health in adulthood. But is it possible to determine what consequences a single traumatic event in childhood might have for long-term psychological wellbeing? For an individual, the answer is no, at least for now. For groups of people, though, it’s possible to look at how…
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Untangling the Relationship Between Autism and Schizophrenia
Autism is a condition that psychiatrists have never known how exactly to categorize. The debate over how to define the condition has played out again in each new version of the DSM, the diagnostic manual commonly used by psychiatrists in the United States. With the latest version of the DSM, published in 2013, the diagnosis…
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Do Early Developmental Milestones Predict Intelligence in Middle Age?
Will a baby who says their first words at a precocious age go on to have a sharp mind at 50? The idea that signs of future intelligence can be spotted in toddlerhood sounds logical enough, but the strength of the correlation between infant behavior and adulthood intelligence remains up for scientific debate. Recently, a…
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Music as a Sleep Aid
“Turn up the music, I’m trying to sleep!” It’s not a phrase you’re likely to hear, but it’s one that apparently describes many people’s bedtime routines. Music is a popular sleep aid, and a new study from researchers in the United Kingdom reveals just how common using music to facilitate sleep is. In the online…
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Dark Personality Traits and Internet Usage
It’s a common recognition these days that the internet has a dark side. The anonymity, lack of face-to-face interaction, and low amount of effort required are all a natural fit for the less noble side of human nature. Psychologists researching the relationship between the dark side of the internet and the dark side of the…
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Teaching Makes a Difference in Whether Students See Classes as Easy or Hard
It’s a common recognition on college campuses that one course might be an “easy A” while another strikes fear into the heart of even the most capable student. But what exactly makes some classes easy and others hard? Teaching technique seems to have something to do with it. In a recent study, researchers at Bethel…
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How Much of Life Is Spent Mind-Wandering?
The human mind is hard to pin down. It goes where it wants, not necessarily where it’s supposed to, and it’s averse to sitting still. But how much does the mind wander? How much of our time do we spend focused on something other than what’s in front of us? The most commonly cited answer…
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Children With Warm Parents Flourish as Adults
What makes a good parent? That’s a complex question, maybe an impossible one. But warmth doesn’t seem to hurt. A new study from researchers at Harvard University suggests that children who experience more parental warmth go on to flourish in middle age. In the study, adults across the United States were asked to recall how…
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Can Dying in Virtual Reality Change Your Life?
Many people who have near-death experiences report coming away with a new perspective on their lives. From a scientific standpoint, we don’t know much about how this works because it’s hard to study near-death experiences systematically. To quote the authors of a new study on near-death experiences, “it is impossible to design a scientific study…
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